e flown at her throat if he had seen her in
such a passion. The memory calmed her, and she rose and went home.
There, perhaps, she would find Prince, for surely he could never have
been such a silly dog as go away altogether with a strange woman!

She opened the door and went in. Dogs were asleep all about the
cottage, it seemed to her, but nowhere was Prince. She crept away to
her little bed, and cried herself asleep.

In the morning the shepherd and shepherdess were indeed glad to find
she had come home, for they thought she had run away.

"Where is Prince?" she cried, the moment she waked.

"His mistress has taken him," answered the shepherd.

"Was that woman his mistress?"

"I fancy so. He followed her as if he had known her all his life. I am
very sorry to lose him, though."

The poor woman had gone close past the rock where the shepherd lay. He
saw her coming, and thought of the strange sheep which had been feeding
beside him when he lay down. "Who can she be?" he said to himself; but
when he noted how Prince followed her, without even looking up at him
as he passed, he remembered how Prince had come to him. And this was
how: as he lay in bed one fierce winter morning, just about to rise, he
heard the voice of a woman call to him through the storm, "Shepherd, I
have brought you a dog. Be good to him. I will come again and fetch him
away." He dressed as quickly as he could, and went to the door. It was
half snowed up, but on the top of the white mound before it stood
Prince. And now he had gone as mysteriously as he had come, and he felt
sad.

Rosamond was very sorry too, and hence when she saw the looks of the
shepherd and shepherdess, she was able to understand them. And she
tried for a while to behave better to them because of their sorrow. So
the loss of the dog brought them all nearer to each other.

X.

After the thunder-storm, Agnes did not meet with a single obstruction
or misadventure. Everybody was strangely polite, gave her whatever she
desired, and answered her questions, but asked none in return, and
looked all the time as if her departure would be a relief. They were
afraid, in fact, from her appearance, lest she should tell them that
she was lost, when they would be bound, on pain of public execution, to
take her to the palace.

But no sooner had she entered the city than she saw it would hardly do
to present herself as a lost child at the palace-gates; for how were
they to know